panforte

Have loved Tartine's recipe for panforte since I first made it. Quinces, orange peel, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts, medjool dates, Zante currants and a whole lot of spice (black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, star anise) baked in a mixture of honey and sugar (cooked to 250ºF) with a little bit of flour and cocoa.


Once baked, it just begins to loose its sheen and puffs slightly. Cool for fifteen minutes or so, but not before it has glued itself to the pan.


Perfectly unmolded.


Finish with powdered sugar. Gets better after a few days and keeps forever: a medieval confection, panforte was one of the provisions crusaders took with them thanks to it keeping so well.

Happy 2011!

poached quinces

I am always amazed at the miracle of quinces: they start off completely inedible, bland in color and taste with a dreadful tough, spongy flesh and cooking for a few hours with sugar turns them a bright ruby color. These three quinces were cooked with a lemon, 1½ cups of sugar and a sliced knob of ginger.

membrillo

With the leftover pulp from my quince gelée, I decided to make quince paste, a/k/a membrillo or cotignac d'Orléans. I passed the quince through a food mill, first coarse, then fine.


I added an equal weight of sugar, per Jane Grigson. This I cooked until "you will barely be able to push the spoon through the paste."


I spread this in a Pyrex 9x13 dish, 1cm thick, as Grigson suggests. Then, after those hours of cooking, comes hours of drying. Over eight hours, flipped thrice, at 170ºF, the membrillo dried.


And now it is packed in sugar, between parchment. All I need is Manchego!

quince preserves

Been on an obvious quince kick lately. And when it comes to fruit, I Jane Grigson's Fruit Book never lets me down. She suggests a quince jelly where one chops the less handsome fruit into small pieces and reserves the nicer quince for slicing.


This pot (above) is filled with chopped whole quinces, then the cores and skins of the nice quinces, and then finished with the elegant quince slices. I also added four star anise, a few allspice berries, a sliced lemon and a half vanilla pod.


Once poached and soft, they are removed.


The rest comes to a hard boil and is mashed up. Once very soft, it gets passed through jelly cloth. I used a food mill and then a conical strainer to extract more, giving a more jamlike texture.


That gets cooked with the sliced quince and 2¼ cups of sugar for each 2 cups of liquid (before adding the slices).


Cook until it jells when placed on a cold plate. This happened around 220º, similar to a marmalade.


I processed these in a hot water bath for six minutes (always use Putting Food By as a reference). Nice texture, softer than membrillo, but more coarse than jelly. Very good. And star anise was a good idea. It's subtle, but highlights the quince flavor.

pear-quince-apple pie

Poached quinces. Apples (two varieties, whose names I forget, but both hardy, heirloom baking ones). Bosc pears. And an all-butter crust.

poached quince

Found some local quinces among a dizzying pile of local apples (40 varieties, of which I purchased the ugliest in hopes of finding an apple to compare to the Belle de Boskoop I loved in Normandy) and I couldn't resist buying some.

I poached these with ginger slices, allspice, cloves and star anise. The ruby color is a natural result of cooking the quinces for hours. These sat at barely a simmer for three hours, and are delicious. I may just eat them, or make a galette, or a quince-apple pie. In the meanwhile, they keep well poached and are set to go.

panforte

I made, among other things (mostly cookies), panforte for the holidays. The recipe was from Tartine.

I candied two quinces and four oranges worth of peel. With that, figs, zante currants, hazlenuts, almonds and pistachio nuts. Add to that coriander, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, chocolate powder and some (honestly, not a whole lot) flour. Over that is poured honey and sugar cooked to a soft-ball stage and it gets baked. It came out really incredible. Even sworn spice cake haters liked it.